Trouble, froze twice!

OK, I am using my computer doing simple stuff, surfing. I do not click on anything I watch temps all good. Twice my mouse disappears, I also have artifacts showing on the screen. It has happened twice. When I force shutdown restarts fine. And runs for weeks no problem. Any Ideas? I don't know what's up, I have control alt del, nothing.

 

Are you undervolting the CPU? If so, go up another voltage step or two. Normally you get a system crash but too few volts could have other less drastic side-effects if the electrons aren't behaving properly.

If running Vista install the patches mentioned here. Otherwise look for newer hardware drivers.

John

 

I am doing nothing and running XP. I have maybe 1 month left on warranty. I have run stress tests that is all they will do. I am concerned so what should I do?

 

You will need to do a clean installation of XP before you can start to blame the hardware. If, after the reinstallation you are still getting problems then you have a much better chance of getting the manufacturer / supplier to agree that there could be a hardware problem.

John

 

Thank you John. Do you have an opinion as to what is going on?

 

Nope, but software is more likely to cause problems than hardware. Something might have got corrupted or something new or updated may have a bug. Viruses, worms and trojans can also cause problems. I presume that you are well protected.

Unless hardware diagnostics indicate a hardware problem or you can associate your problem with specific events (eg move the screen and it flashes), then it is difficult to blame the hardware. Even if you send it back, if the technicians can't find a fault then they won't be able to fix it.

At the moment the GPU drivers are probably probably one of the biggest causes of grief. For example, I tried the latest Intel Vista graphics driver a few days ago. I was running 3DMark05 (to see if there was any improvement in the score). After it crashed the third time, I rolled back to the previous driver.

John

 

Ha Ha updated Windows yesterday! But the first happened B/4. I will run all the scans even though supposed to do automatically.

 

If it is any comfort, my Vista has just BSOD'd, but rebooted fine.

The event log contains various entries, but none which identifies this problem.

Have you looked in your system event log for clues?

John